Apartheid South Africa and African States: From Pariah to Middle Power, 1961-1994 (review)

Political scientists have long questioned whether the foreign policy of states is a product of global geopolitical considerations, internal political dynamics, or individual leaders. In his study of South African foreign policy from 1961 to1994, Roger Pfister offers an interesting analysis of how the white minority regime in Pretoria came to fashion its diplomatic and economic relations with other African states.

Pfister organizes his study of South African foreign policy by reviewing each administration's policies. His research shows how each apartheid leader reconciled policy differences among the Department of Foreign Affairs, the military elite, and the Bureau of State Security (BOSS). He details how Verwoerd relied on the experts of the Foreign Affairs office, whereas Vorster turned to BOSS to compensate for his "serious lack of decisive leadership" (12). Botha shifted responsibility for foreign affairs to the military during his presidential term, and de Klerk turned to the foreign affairs professionals to lay the foundation for the dismantling of apartheid and make the transition to a nonracial democracy.

In analyzing the internal mechanisms of policymaking, exogenous considerations often get overlooked. For instance, Pfister suggests that South Africa's decision to end the occupation of Namibia was based on the liberal attitude of Pik Botha, South Africa's representative to the United Nations, but he does not explain how the progressive diplomat was able to persuade President P. W. Botha and his military advisors to make such a radical transformation in their attitude toward the country's diamond-rich neighbor. Nor does Pfister mention what effect international sanctions or South Africa's military defeat at Cuito Cuanavale in 1989 by Cuban troops may have had on this decision.

Pfister is at his best in reviewing how apartheid leaders responded to the various challenges facing African states between World War II and the democratic election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. While Western states increasingly aimed to isolate the racist regime in Pretoria, apartheid leaders took every opportunity to pursue their own constructive engagement with the rest of the African continent. This "outward-looking policy" was advanced in Malawi, Madagascar, Chad, the Biafran secession in Nigeria, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Mauritius, Liberia, and the Central African Republic. Clearly, however, South Africa's aggressive policies against its own people and its immediate neighbors compromised the effectiveness of these policies. Pfister does acknowledge that Vorster desired a reassessment of policies toward Namibia and Rhodesia (94), but he fails to explain the extent to which these policy changes may have resulted from a desire to improve relations with Western states. Even when "successes" are identified in South Africa's political objectives, it is never clear whether they were the result of strong leadership or whether the international community merely was rewarding South Africa for making any attempt to reform its repulsive racist policies.

Perhaps the biggest shortcoming in Pfister's study is his failure to analyze the information scandal that rocked South African politics in 1978. In several places (12, 18, 20, 104, 146), Pfister emphasizes that this scandal was key to forcing Pretoria to pursue a "volte-face" in its foreign policies toward Africa, yet it is only in the very last few pages that he shares with the reader some minimal details as to what this event was all about. Pfister also uses his introduction and conclusion to explain that his study utilizes the "political science concept" and the "international relations premise" to support his argument. At no point does he explain what such nebulous terms mean, even for other political scientists.